


Treasures

by Ladycat



Series: Happy Endings [3]
Category: Angel: the Series
Genre: Alternate Universe, College, M/M, Porn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-12
Updated: 2014-02-12
Packaged: 2018-01-12 03:45:33
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1181494
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ladycat/pseuds/Ladycat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In those eyes, Spike sees the same whimsy that made him love Dru, the one that sent her dancing among sunbeams, or screaming and scratching till blood ran down like rain.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Treasures

He has depth, this one. Spike lays in bed for long hours in the morning, watching sparrow wing hair turn dappled in the growing light, just trying to figure it out. He still needs that, sometimes. The words, shaped sounds to define things, a throwback to when his world was measured in meter and ruled by the rhyme. He’s tossed away most of the rules and broken the few that remain by now, but still. Sometimes. When the world is grey and still, waiting for the break of light on the horizon and only the steady breath of this boy by his side to remind him of time’s cadence ... he needs it.

He starts off with an onion. Cliched and not the least bit romantic, but as starting places go, it’s usually a good one. Because this boy is like an onion—most especially because he isn’t a boy, for all coltish limbs are sprawled with a cat’s unconscious grace, complete with a cat’s unconscious need to bogart more space than a compact body could realistically need. But that’s the first layer, isn’t it? A hint of boyish charm Spike swears he’s never seen Angel display, not once, snub of a nose proclaiming youth and innocence to the wide, wide world.

But look at his eyes, ashy grey and hidden, and you find the second layer. This one’s seen to much, both good and bad, though it’s magic that’s made him see more of the latter. The end result is the same. In those eyes, Spike sees the same whimsy that made him love Dru, the one that sent her dancing among sunbeams, or screaming and scratching till blood ran down like rain. It’s beautiful, cracked glass that reflects the light in a hundred, thousand different patterns, each as brilliant as the last. It’s terrifying, too, and it makes him think about what it means to Spike. For Spike, actually, who wonders even now if he’s still crazy. If he’s really locked in a basement, a mad house back in England, maybe, or if all the games Angelus had played, the dreams he’d spun and shattered have taken Spike with him and all of this...

Connor shifts abruptly, sleepily reacting to Spike’s tension with a slurred phrase of nonsense and a lap full of warm weight abruptly covering Spike from knee to navel. Spike looks down at the boy curled around him, hair spread like a static halo over his belly, and can’t help but relax. Third layer, then, and maybe it’s time to replace the onion image after all? Because his eyes may sting and tear as each layer’s peeled back, but the layers never go away. They’re still there, fluttering like veils, masks that shift and change their shape, but never crack and never truly lift off. Spike doubts there really is a center under all of this, chewy or otherwise, but he wants to find out. Wants to find the softly beating heart of the young man who reacts to his lover’s pain selflessly, not letting even sleep prevent him from offering what solace he can. Arms strong from the gym he disappears into for hours, the sparring games Spike loves to play regardless if the reward is a cock full of sticky come or bruises that ache with fizzy pleasantness underneath his skin. This is a man, despite the boyish features. A man who lives and loves.

Fears, too, and Spike knows this layer, this fluttering curtain that draws back but seldom, is closer to the core. It’s reflected in a chin that’s almost weak, a mouth that’s two pink mounds of trembling vulnerability. Spike loves those lips, licking and nipping them red and full, so bruised with passion that Connor looks drunk with it. But it’s fear that stops those lips from turning to smiles as often as they should. Fear of what was, of what might have been. What might still be, at any moment. This boy who lived a man’s life, loves with a child’s desperation, a man’s loose-limbed confidence, and a warrior’s resignation.

It’s the last that Spike hates of all the layers he sees. The one that takes everything Connor has seen, good bad and neutral bland. The one that remembers every slight, every bit of praise. Two fathers so different in style they nearly cancel themselves out, a lostling boy raised without Buffy’s lost boys for shelter, Angel’s tinkerbell for guidance, even his own Wendy to love. The similarities between them are striking when Spike lays them out like this, each one vying for Pan’s crown, but for one thing. There’s bitterness in Connor than he should never had. A human child, three or twenty one, the age doesn’t matter. He’s human, innocent as a babe. Or should be. No babe knows the grit and stink of blood as the jugular is cut. Baby _vampire_ , sure. But no human should know the resistance of muscle and bone fighting to push back, to protect.

He does, though. Knows everything Spike learned about rage and hate, pain and mindless terror over a century of vampirism. What he doesn’t know, don’t trust even with the memories of a mother’s loving caress lingering over the gift of a first knife, is affection. Love for loves sake, something Spike—for all his doubts, all his insecurities—never truly doubts. He knows he’s never been loved _enough_ , never been loved equally, but he’s been loved. Truly madly deeply.

The physical is a gateway only, but Spike uses it. Pushes Connor back into a loose-limbed sprawl on his back, attacking a chest so narrow and lacking definition that it’s a wonder he’s strong enough to push himself out of bed, let alone Spike across a room. Spike kisses and sucks, tasting lime’s tang and the spicy brine salt, working until he finds the prize that’s nothing of Angel, nothing of Darla, and nothing, _nothing_ of Holtz. This is Connor only, looking and acting like nothing Spike’s ever encountered even after a century of fucking any boy that took his fancy. Connor comes awake as he’s attended, eyes wide, vulnerable mouth trembling between a smile of greeting and a gasp of wanting. Torn and twisted, this little boy, and Spike loves him for it. Loves him more for the light that dawns underneath too-long lashes that sweep with a butterfly-wing’s devastation against his cheek.

It’s there. No masks, no gauzy curtains billowing to hide how _many_ layers there are, no translucent curves, no nothing. Just the animal pleasure of his body’s enjoyment—and human’s love for the one who caused it.

Later, much later, when Connor’s working his thin body up and down with a rentboy’s grace and a lover’s enthusiasm, when Spike’s ready to shatter inside greedy heat and greedier eyes, he’s not surprised when words slip past his lips. He’s wanted to say them for weeks, held back only because they didn’t _do_ things like that. Connor didn’t do things like that, he’d claimed over and over. He could fuck, could lay there basking, could spend hours unable to stop touching and being touched. But those were physical things and Connor is the master at anything physical. It’s words that he distrusts and the emotions that fuel them. But Spike is nothing but words, even after so long, he’s a patchwork quilt of sounds and whispered meanings, and when he’s lost in Connor like this, gasping and grateful, he lets them free.

And it’s better than the sunrise, better than the final removal of the very last curtain, when Connor smiles— _smiles_ —and says, “I know.”


End file.
